3 - THE WEIGHT OF DECEPTION #2
It was an old table. Solid oak. The same table where she'd eaten breakfast with her husband. The same table where they'd talked about baby names and nursery colors and the future that Victoria was systematically dismantling.
Brock bent her over it.
The wood was cool against her breasts. Her palms pressed flat on the surface, and she felt him behind her—his hands on her hips, his cock nudging against her entrance, the heat of him as he positioned himself.
"You're so wet," he said. "You've been thinking about this all morning, haven't you?"
"Since I woke up."
"Tell me what you thought about."
"Your cock inside me. Your hands on my hips. You filling me up." She pushed back against him, and the head of him slipped inside her, just barely. "Like that. Exactly like that."
Brock drove into her with one thrust.
Victoria cried out. The fullness was overwhelming—the stretch of him, the depth, the way he filled every empty space inside her. Her fingers curled against the table's edge. Her back arched. And Brock began to move—steady, deliberate strokes that made her see stars.
"God," she gasped. "God, yes—"
"You like that?" His voice was strained, rough. "You like being fucked on my kitchen table while my son is at work?"
"Don't—"
"Don't what? Don't remind you that you're his wife? Don't remind you that this is his house, his table, his—"
"Don't stop."
His laugh was breathless, almost pained.
He picked up the pace, his hips slapping against her ass, the sound obscene in the quiet kitchen.
The table creaked beneath them. The salt shaker rattled.
Somewhere outside, a lawnmower started up, and Victoria thought—absurdly, distantly—that she should care if someone heard, should care if the neighbors were home.
She didn't care.
All she cared about was the cock driving into her, the hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise, the man behind her whose baby was taking root in her womb.
Brock's hand slid up her spine. Pressed between her shoulder blades, pushing her chest flat against the table. The new angle made her gasp—he was deeper like this, hitting a place inside her that made sparks shoot up her spine, that made her vision blur at the edges.
"Right there," she managed. "Right there, don't stop, don't stop—"
He didn't stop. His rhythm was punishing now, relentless, the rhythm of a man who'd spent a lifetime controlling his impulses and was finally letting them loose.
Victoria felt the orgasm building at the base of her spine—a pressure, a heat, a gathering storm that made her toes curl against the linoleum.
"I'm close," she breathed. "I'm so close—"
Brock's hand left her back. Slid around her hip. His fingers found her clit, wet and swollen, and pressed circles into the sensitive nub.
The climax ripped through her with a force that made her scream—a real scream, loud enough that the neighbors probably did hear, and she couldn't bring herself to care.
Her inner muscles pulsed around his cock.
Her thighs trembled. Her fingers clawed at the table's surface, looking for something to hold onto and finding nothing.
Brock fucked her through it. Through the peak and down the other side, until the waves of her orgasm subsided into aftershocks. Only then did his rhythm falter. Only then did his grip on her hips turn desperate.
"Inside me," she said. The words were automatic now, a ritual. "Cum inside me."
He did.
The groan he made was almost animal. His hips slammed against her one final time, and then he was emptying into her, pulse after pulse of heat that she felt spread through her belly.
She imagined it taking root—impossible, she was already pregnant, but she imagined it anyway, imagined his seed finding a home in her body the way it had seven weeks ago.
Brock collapsed against her back. His forehead pressed between her shoulder blades. His breath came in ragged gasps that she could feel against her skin.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The kitchen was silent except for their breathing and the drip of the faucet and the distant drone of the lawnmower down the street. The salt shaker had tipped over. Neither of them reached to right it.
Then Brock pulled out. Victoria felt the loss of him, the emptiness, the trickle of his semen down her inner thigh. She pushed herself upright on trembling arms.
"That was—" She couldn't finish the sentence.
"I know." He was already reaching for his boxers, his jeans, the belt he'd discarded on the floor.
His movements were mechanical now, the post-coital shame creeping in around the edges.
She'd seen it before. Every time, without fail—the passion would burn bright, and then the reality would settle in, and Brock would retreat into himself like a turtle pulling into its shell.
Victoria found her sundress. Pulled it over her head. The yellow cotton was wrinkled now, and she didn't have underwear to put on, and her thighs were sticky with the evidence of what they'd just done.
"Brock."
He paused. "What?"
"I need to tell you something."
His face went still. The correctional officer mask slid into place—the one he wore at work, the one that kept prisoners at a distance and emotions locked down. "Is it about the baby? Is something wrong?"
"No. The baby's fine." She took a breath. "I'm falling for you."
"Victoria—"
"I know it's wrong. I know you're going to say we can't, that it would destroy Joey, that this is just—just physical, just something that happened. But it's not. Not for me."
She pressed her hand to her belly. "Every time I think about this baby, I think about you. Every time Joey talks about the future, I imagine a different future. One where I'm with you instead."
Brock stared at her. The muscle in his jaw pulsed. "You don't mean that."
"I do."
"You can't. We can't." He ran both hands over his buzzed hair, a gesture she'd come to recognize as his tell for overwhelming emotion.
"Jesus Christ, Victoria, do you know what you're saying? You're my son's wife. This baby—our baby—is supposed to be his. We've already gone too far. We've already done something unforgivable. And now you want to make it worse?"
"I'm not asking you to run away with me." She stepped toward him. "I'm not asking you to tell Joey the truth. I'm just—" She pressed her palm to his chest. Felt his heart hammering beneath. "I'm just telling you how I feel. Because I can't keep pretending I don't feel it."
His hand came up to cover hers. His gray eyes were wet now, the mask cracking, the control slipping.
"I have feelings for you too," he said quietly.
"Do you think I'd keep doing this if I didn't? Do you think I'd risk everything—my son, my relationship with him, my own goddamn soul—if this was just sex?"
"Then what do we do?"
"Nothing." The word fell between them like a guillotine. "We do nothing. We keep this secret. We raise this child as Joey's. And we live with what we've done."
"And this?" She gestured between them. "The two of us?"
"How can there be a two of us? You're married to my son." He pulled his hand back. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Victoria. But there's no future here. There's only this—stolen moments and lies. And eventually, even that has to stop."
He turned away. Finished buckling his belt. Straightened his shirt. The motion of a man putting himself back together after falling apart.
"It's not going to stop," Victoria said to his back. "You know it's not going to stop."
Brock paused at the kitchen door. His shoulders were rigid. His hands were clenched at his sides. But he didn't turn around. Didn't deny it. Didn't say anything at all.
He just walked away.
—
That night, the house was quiet.
The three of them ate dinner in the living room—a pizza Joey had picked up on his way home from work, the grease soaking through the cardboard box.
The television played a local news broadcast that none of them were watching.
Brock sat in his recliner, his eyes fixed on the screen, his jaw tight with the weight of the morning's conversation.
Victoria sat on the couch, as far from Brock as the furniture allowed.
Joey sat beside her.
His hand found her thigh halfway through the weather report.
His thumb traced small circles through the fabric of her sweatpants—gentle, tentative, the touch of a man who was still learning how to want his wife after months of scheduled sex and fertility charts and the clinical sterility of trying to conceive.
"I was thinking," he murmured, low enough that Brock couldn't hear over the television. "Maybe we could go to bed early tonight."
Victoria's stomach clenched. "Joey—"
"It's been a while." His hand slid higher. "I know things have been weird. The move, the IVF, all of it. But we're having a baby now. We should celebrate. Really celebrate."
His meaning was unmistakable. She could feel the wanting in his touch, the tentative hope. Joey, who hadn't initiated sex in weeks. Joey, who'd been too consumed with guilt and grief to even look at her naked. Joey, who was finally coming back to life now that he thought he was going to be a father.
She couldn't do it.
The thought of his hands on her body—on the body that Brock had bent over the kitchen table that morning, the body that was still tender from the force of his thrusts—made her stomach turn.
Not because she didn't love Joey. She did.
She loved him in the way you love someone who's been your whole world for four years, who's held your hand through every doctor's appointment and every disappointment, who's never done anything to deserve what you've done to him.
But she couldn't let him touch her. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again.
"I'm really tired," she said. "The pregnancy—"
"Right." His hand retreated. "Right, of course. Dr. Chen said fatigue is normal. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking."
"Don't apologize."
"No, I should have realized." He leaned over and kissed her temple. "We have plenty of time. Nine months, right?" He laughed, a nervous sound. "Well, seven and a half now. But still."
Victoria forced a smile. "Plenty of time."